


all we do

by ameliafuckingshepherd



Series: me taking out my problems on the avengers [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anorexia, Avengers Family, Avengers Feels, Domestic Avengers, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Holidays, Hospitalization, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kinda, Mental Health Issues, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov-centric, Not Really Character Death, Self-Harm, Sickfic, based on my own problems, shes okay tho dont worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 02:30:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18769363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliafuckingshepherd/pseuds/ameliafuckingshepherd
Summary: we all fight battles, and sometimes we lose.





	all we do

**Author's Note:**

> another vent fic because I have Problems That Are Quickly Getting Worse and this is the only way I can process them, yeehaw  
> edit: just got out of rehab for anorexia, who’s proud of me?

blood. blood everywhere, sticking to her clothes, her skin, dripping from the shrapnel embedded in her shoulder and leg, dripping through the burns covering a large portion of her back.

 

Natasha lay on her stomach. She had been undercover somewhere in Texas, operating out of SHIELD headquarters. She was surveying a park when a blast knocked her back, threw her twenty feet. It slammed her to the ground, breaking her arm, her nose, and bruising the rest of her. 

 

She coughed, hacking up blood. 

 

"Romanoff, come in," Steve shouted through the comms. "What the hell was that?"

 

Natasha held a shaking hand to her ear. "bomb," she gasped. Her back burned like it had been skinned, worse than any pain she'd ever felt. The scent of gasoline and laundry detergent hung heavy in the air, turned her stomach. "napalm."

 

"Falcon on, everyone okay?"

 

"Sam, where are you? we gotta get to Romanoff, she's-"

 

"she's fine, stay away from here. there could be more explosions," Natasha said, every word burning her throat. The heat was unbearable. Several buildings burned, the smell of charcoal flesh joining the other smells of destruction.

 

"Romanoff, get out of there," Fury yelled. When had he connected? "do you hear me? don't play hero, just  _ get the _ hell _ out of there. _ "

 

Natasha didn't argue. She stumbled to her feet, holding the fabric of her shirt over her mouth. eyes streamed and skin stung, but she'd been through worse and come out alive.

 

She left a part of herself with the people laying in the streets. Later, reading over the official mission report, she'd learn that over seventy had died in the explosion, half of smoke inhalation, the other half of related injuries. It was a miracle the spy herself survived. 

 

Natasha went as far as she could, which wasn't far. her injuries were bad enough to make her stumble, then fall to her knees on the blazing hot concrete. minutes, maybe hours (because time passed slowly under the haze of war, and nothing felt real) later, Sam landed next to her, scooped her up, and flew back into the sky. Natasha was awake of how loud she was screaming, but her back hurt so fucking bad she couldn't stay silent.

 

somewhere along the line, she passed out.

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Natasha had been in the hospital for three weeks, then the burn unit for another five. her team visited her almost more than she'd like, but it was nice that they cared. 

 

When she was finally released, Clint pushed her wheelchair through Shield HQ. She made him take her straight to her room. She had no interest in talking to the employees and agents trying to greet her.

 

“Come on Tash, they just want to say hello,” Clint murmured. 

 

Natasha pressed her lips together and shook her head. Clint didn’t fight her. 

 

He knew how much it killed her to be out of the field and stuck in a bed for so long. If she didn’t want to talk to Rumlow or Fields or anyone else, she didn’t have to.

  
  


 

* * *

  
  


 

Natasha never really gained the weight she had lost during the hospital stay. She didn’t mind, either. Some sick part of her liked the concerned glances Steve threw her way, or the subtle touches by Clint to determine just how bony she really was. 

 

And maybe she wasn’t trying to gain any of it back. Sure, it was strange to look in the mirror and see her face on a different body, but she was still the same old spy she was before. She didn’t exactly dislike the absence of curves and breasts, it was just a big change. She had the body of a dancer, the body the Red Room always wanted her to have. 

 

And it was enough, for a while. Counting everything she ate (until she didn’t need to count anymore, she just knew), watching her body change in the mirror, the gnawing satisfaction of hunger in the pit of her stomach. It was all enough to keep her afloat, keep her breathing. 

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


 

Natasha knew this wouldn’t last forever.

 

Pepper brought her a bagel. A simple, kind gesture, because Natasha had mentioned she liked bagels. 

 

She had to eat it. It would be rude not to.

 

That stupid fucking bagel opened up a hole inside of her, a hole screaming and shouting for any kind of nutrition, demanding retribution for the months and months Natasha left it empty. 

 

The weight came back on, slowly but surely. 

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

Did Pepper give her the bagel because she knew it would snap something inside of Natasha? Was it all some scheme to return her to her past self? 

 

Natasha knows that Pepper would never do that to her, but the hole inside of her thought differently. 

 

_ She’s poisoning us. She’s trying to kill us. She wants you fat. You can’t trust her.  _

 

Natasha tried to ignore the voice. Pepper was her friend. 

 

She could always trust Pepper.

 

Right?

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


She went a month eating “right”. The layer of fat on her body disgusted her. She was disgusting. 

 

She took a razor blade to her thigh and cut until all she saw was blood. She took a lighter to her arm and burned holes in the porcelain skin. She deserved it. 

 

She was hideous. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Natasha sat curled into Steve on her bed. Back from a long mission (and a longer debriefing), they collapsed on the first surface they could find. One minute everything was fine, the next her body was shaking with hardly repressed sobs.

 

It could have been the rerun of Kate’s Secret playing on TV, or perhaps the cold, lifeless feel of the child’s neck in the wake of the latest battle. Steve didn’t say anything, pulled her closer and kissed the crown of her head. Natasha wanted to scream, wanted to tell Steve everything that was wrong, how she felt like she was trapped in this shell of a body and there was no way out. Maybe if she told him, he could save her. He could pull her out of this.

 

But the pit in her chest held her mouth shut, telling her to hold her tongue or terrible, awful things would happen.

 

So Natasha didn’t say anything.

 

And Steve didn’t ask. 

  
  


 

* * *

  
  
  


Winter turned to spring, and spring turned to summer. Days passed in a blur, leaving Natasha to wonder where the hell the time had gone. One day, she was wading through the snow to her car, the next she was packing for a trip to Mexico with the rest of the team. 

 

“How long are we staying, two weeks?” Clint asked. 

 

“I think so,” Natasha replied, rifling through her drawers. “You know, you could help me pack instead of just sitting there.”

 

“I think you’re fine.”

 

Natasha rolled her eyes and threw a blood red bikini in the open suitcase. “Don’t you have things to do, birdbrain?”

 

“I’m already packed. Only thing on my agenda is annoying you.” 

 

She chose to do the adult thing and hurl a bra at him. 

 

“Ew! Jesus, message received,” he grumbled. To Natasha’s satisfaction, he hopped off her bed and scampered out of the room, as much as a thirty-something-year-old man could scamper.

 

“Just a bra, you ostrich,” Natasha shouted after him.

 

“ _ Exactly! _ ”

 

Natasha smirked and shut her suitcase. Everything was in there except her toothbrush. She retrieved it from the bathroom, but her eyes lingered on something else: a pack of razor blades.

 

After a second of hesitation, she grabbed them. Just in case.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Agent Romanoff, I can not medically clear you to go on this trip,” Doctor Lanning said. 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well,you’re up to date on all your shots, you’re negative for everything we’ve screened for, but there’s another problem.” The doctor sat down. She was a nice woman with smooth blonde hair, but Natasha didn’t trust blondes. 

 

“Which is?”

 

“Your weight, Agent. I’m afraid your BMI is too low. If something were to happen, you may not be able to get proper medical care.”

 

This wasn’t happening. Natasha wasn’t even at her goal weight, her ribs hardly showed, her legs hardly had any space between them. “I’m sorry, there has to be a mistake. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“You weigh one hundred and twelve pounds. According to your medical history, you’ve lost twenty pounds since your last weigh-in, and I can’t in good consciousness let you go to a country with diseases your body may not be able to handle at this weight.”

 

Natasha couldn’t listen to this. Was the doctor blind? Natasha was huge. She was massive. There was nothing her body couldn’t handle. Why was this doctor lying to her? 

 

she stood up and left the room. 

 

“Agent Romanoff, it is my medical opinion that it is not safe for you to go on this trip,” Doctor Lanning said firmly after her, but Natasha kept walking. 

 

It didn’t matter anyway.

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


“You’ve lost weight again,” Tony commented.

 

She really hadn’t, but it felt nice to hear. 

 

“That’s not something you say to a woman, Stark.”

 

“No I didn’t-,” Tony sighed, for once seeming to struggle with words. “I mean I’m worried about you, Romanoff.”

 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Tony, I appreciate it, but I’m a superhero. I think I can handle myself.”

 

Tony dropped the subject, but his eyes lingered on Natasha for a while.

 

Mexico had been fun, but she suddenly felt self-conscious. It was an achievement that someone was “worried” about her weight, a testament to her months of hard work, but she came here to relax in the sun and leave it all behind.

 

This week, she would eat normally. Act normally. She’d give every impression that she was doing fine (because she was), and none of her teammates would ever find out.

 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


Dinner on a Saturday night. A restaurant by the sea. 

 

The team sat around the table talking like everything was the same as it used to be, and it killed her. 

 

Nothing was the same, couldn’t they see?

 

Next year, Stark was selling the tower. They’d all move. Thor cut his hair. Wanda’s accent was fading more each day. Everything was changing, and Natasha was the only one who knew it. 

 

It felt like she blinked, and suddenly a decade had passed. Who was the man she slept with? What about the people she lived with? She could hardly even remember meeting them. It was terrifying.

 

People die and people move and people grow up. That’s the hardest thing about life. 

 

Natasha stood up abruptly. Clint asked if she was okay, Steve brushed his hand against her back. They felt a million miles away. She made it to the hallway before throwing up into a planter. silent tears splattered on her dress.

 

Maybe the doctor was right.

  
  


Maybe she shouldn’t have come. 

 

Clint came after her, and she clung to him like he was the only thing between her and the abyss below them. The abyss that threatened to swallow her whole. Threatened to destroy everything she knew. 

 

“I can’t do this anymore, Clint, I can't.”

 

“I know, Tasha. But you have to keep going.”

 

“I can’t.” Her voice cracked pitifully. In another time, she would have been embarrassed. The Black Widow doesn’t cry, doesn’t break down, doesn’t run away from dinner just because she can’t bring herself to forget about the future. 

 

the Black Widow went to sleep a long time ago, and all that was left was Natasha Romanoff.

 

Who is human.

 

Who is suffocating.

 

Who feels like she is drowning in molasses. Slowly, unable to swim.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Clint took her home three days early. New York had never felt so inviting. It embraced her like the mother she never had, held her tight and promised to keep her safe. 

 

They walked along the Brooklyn bridge, hand in hand. 

 

Natasha wondered what an outsider would think if they saw them.

 

Would they see Black Widow and Hawkeye, or would they see a man and a skeleton woman? Would they see two friends dependant on each other to survive, or would they see a couple without a care in the world?

 

Natasha stopped, looked over the edge. The summer air was warm, but she shivered. Clint pulled her closer. 

 

“I’m sick,” she admitted quietly. 

 

“I know.” 

 

“I don’t know what to do.”

 

“I know.”

 

And they kept walking.

 

The world didn’t stop turning. Aliens didn’t invade. 

 

Natasha Romanoff was sick, and the world wasn’t going to end because of it.

 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Weeks passed, and weeks turned in to months. Cold biting winds took over the skies, blue giving into grey. All over the world, people traded in swimsuits for sweaters and flip flops for boots. Leaves fell silently, more silent than a tomb, and the noises of the city felt muted. 

 

Natasha’s little family pulled themselves closer, spending less time away and more time together. The fireplace drove off cold threatening to come through windows, and Christmas trees replaced jack-o-lanterns. She loved Christmas. They didn’t get holidays in the red room. 

 

She and Wanda and Pepper sat around the kitchen with cups of eggnog. The men were out bowling (“we need a break from all the testosterone in here,” pepper insisted as she shooed them out the door), so they were having a girl’s night. 

 

Natasha didn’t touch the eggnog. 

 

Two hundred and seventy-three calories per cup couldn’t be worth it.

 

“I’m putting on some Christmas music,” Natasha announced.

 

“No sad ones,” Wanda said enthusiastically. She never had a proper Christmas, either. 

 

Wanda felt like the child Natasha never had, sometimes. She reminded Natasha of herself. Young and pretty, lost in a world she’d been forced to join. “Friday, play the good Christmas carols.”

 

“Right away, Agent Romanoff.”

 

The Good Christmas Carols (the ones deemed worthy by Peter, Tony’s kid) were everything except Run Run Rudolph, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and the really sad ones. Natasha noticed how Tony couldn’t stand Christmas carols. Many years, he and Natasha had gotten drunk and cried to A White Christmas, I’ll be home for Christmas, and everything else with the word Christmas in the title. 

 

Wasn’t it a holiday for joy?

 

A holiday for children and happiness?

 

Things didn’t need to be so sad. Music told the truth, though. There was no escaping that. 

 

Natasha exhaled heavily. she had got to stop making herself sadder. “Who wants refills?”

 

Pepper held up her empty cup. Wanda downed the rest of hers in a swig and handed it to Natasha. Natasha stood, but immediately sat back down. 

 

“Nat? Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, just a little...just a little lightheaded.”

 

She collapsed on the ground, glasses shattering on concrete. 

 

For the first time in years, she wondered if it was time to stop. 

  
  
  


* * *

 

“Tony, I’m really sick.” It was the second time she said those words, and it hurt less now. Tony didn’t say anything. He held her hand tightly. “I can’t stop.”

 

“You have to.”

 

“I want to,” she said, her voice breaking to a cry. “I can’t. It feels like I’m going downhill on rollerskates, Tony. I can’t stop.”

 

Tony didn’t know what to say, so he hugged her tight and murmured comforting words in her ear. 

 

The nurses were kind in this hospital. 

 

They let her have visitors whenever she wanted, let her keep her phone. 

 

Hospitals for anorexics were not usually like this.

 

The books told her that, the Instagram pages and youtube videos and blogs. Natasha didn’t think she’d ever get sick enough to belong in a hospital.

 

The IV in her arm and the tube in her nose said otherwise. 

  
  


 

* * *

  
  
  
  


Her feet slipped and slid on the ice of the roof. Cold bit through her clothing, but it wouldn’t matter how many more layers she put on. She’d never be warm. 

 

Natasha Romanoff made her way to the edge of the roof and sat with her feet reaching to the ground.       

 

Natasha Romanoff who had tried everything to get better and had failed again and again and again. 

 

“Please,” she begged the pit in her chest. “Please go away. I’ll do anything. Please.”

 

The monster in the pit stared back and didn’t say a word. 

 

“I don’t want to die like this. I can’t die like this.”

 

Silent, the thing coiled up tighter. It seemed like it was planning to stay. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Nat, please. I’ll do anything, please get better,” Clint whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want, we all will.”

 

Did he think she was asleep? 

 

Her eyes closed a long time ago. She can’t remember how she gave up to the monster and the pit in her chest. 

 

Everyone kept fucking telling her that. Didn’t they know she was trying? She was getting better. They were letting her out in two days (not because they wanted to. Because they had to.). She was going to be fine. 

 

_ I’m trying so hard. _

 

“I need you to win this battle. I need you.” 

 

_ Smile, Birdbrain. The worst has yet to come. I’ll be lucky if I ever see the sun.  _

 

Why can’t she speak? 

 

Is she dead?

 

She doesn’t feel dead, but who can say? In a way, she’s been dead for months. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Silence, then blinding light. Natasha fought back, but it pulled her. She screamed and kicked because she had to win. For her team. For Steve. For Tony. For Clint. For her niece and nephews. 

 

She didn’t have enough fight left. She fed off nutrients while the monster inside her fed off starvation, and which one was winning? 

 

Shock.

 

Gasp.

 

choked heaving, relieved sobs. 

 

“All right, she’s back. Good work, Doctor.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


Bit by bit, they built her back up.

 

Built her into a person again.

 

It took a long time, but she was okay with that. 

 

The relieved looks from her family were enough to tell her she had done the right thing.

 

everyone has battles. you win and you lose. but how hard you fight? 

 

that's up to you. 

**Author's Note:**

> eating disorders are hell on earth.


End file.
